“Posts With Pure Emotion Go Viral” Tip From Lexi Montgomery

My post went viral on LinkedIn last year, and resulted in the following:

10,169 likes

4,493 comments

Over 1 million impressions

$51,000 in revenue for our firm

I made this post out of the pure emotion I was feeling that morning when I got the call my dad had passed away from cancer. He was diagnosed in October and dead by January.

As a Neuromarketer, I was curious about how this kind of virality was achieved on such a small platform. I tried to replicate it using several different cognitive biases, triggers and angles like controversy. I made over 100 posts in the following months. By far the most successful were posts that evoked an emotional response.

In Neuroscience, motivation to take action requires the scientist to generate an emotional response. In Neuromarketing, evoking purchase intent also requires you to generate an emotional response as well. The original post was unrelated to my company, but people clicked onto my profile and wanted to learn more. This led to a stream of new clients and opportunities, and we’ve been growing ever since.